Quotes about heart (8745 quotes, page 56)

“The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: (1940), V

Past

“For centuries we have labored under the illusion that Western Christianity was something that could be exported, and only recent events have at last made it obvious to us how vain and futile have been the labors and zeal of devoted missionaries for five centuries. When Cortez and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest and devoted missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Christian gospel to the natives. And they soon sent back home, with innocent enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. You can feel their sincerity, their piety, their ardor, and their joy in the pages of Father Sagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. And for their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they had really played in the religious conversions that gave them such joy. Far more effective than their words and their book had been the Spanish cannon that had breached the Aztec defenses and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who had slain the Aztec priests at their altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids. The Aztecs accepted Christianity as a cult, not because their hearts were touched by doctrines of love and mercy, but because Christianity was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors made them invincible.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

Love , Men , Books , Religion

“I have tried to show pragmatism as a moment in the swing of thought from realism to idealism, and how for it the most vital, that is to say, the moral and religious aspects of our world are things to work and fight for, to make and to mould, not just to find and come across. Its god is indeed a god of battles, and we are his soldiers on whom his victory depends. But as I view this battle, it is not to be fought out in heart throes and outpourings of sentiment. These may indeed change and better human relationships; but it must not be forgotten that human relationships exist in a physical universe that is older than they, and promises to outlast them. Now, just the physics of things show a strong tendency to be amoral and atheistic. "You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees.”

Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (1873–1954) American philosopher

Source: Modern thinkers and present problems, (1923), p. 243-44: Partly cited in: John Barton (1999, p. 10)

God , World , Strong , Universe

“When I was working at Planned Parenthood I was extremely pro-choice, I would say there was a definite conversion in my heart… a spiritual conversion. Every meeting that we had was, "We don't have enough money, we don't have enough money — we've got to keep these abortions coming," It's a very lucrative business and that's why they want to increase numbers.”

Abby Johnson (activist)

Planned Parenthood Director Quits After Watching Abortion on Ultrasound http://www.foxnews.com/us/2009/11/02/planned-parenthood-director-quits-watching-abortion-ultrasound.html (November 2, 2009)

Money , Business

“And this is the mission of the church — not civilization, but salvation — not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality, and liberty, but FIRST, the " kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 149.

God , Law

“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Letter to Colonel A. F. Rockwell (13 August 1866)
1860s

“I feel the deepest affliction at the news we have just received at the loss of our dear and inestimable friend Laurens. His career of virtue is at end. How strangely are human affairs conducted, that so many excellent qualities could not ensure a more happy fate! The world will feel the loss of a man who has left few like him behind; and America, of a citizen whose heart realized that patriotism of which others only talk. I feel the loss of a friend whom I truly and most tenderly loved, and one of a very small number.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Letter to Nathanael Greene (12 October 1782), as quoted in Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene http://books.google.com/books?id=pLZSAAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s, page 342

Love , Fate , World , Feeling

“When your heart has been broken,
Hard words have been spoken.
It ain't easy - but it's only love.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

It's Only Love, performed with Tina Turner
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Love

“What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Large Catechism 1.1-3, F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, tr.<cite>Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church</cite>(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 565. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html

God , Faith , Confidence , Falseness

“A budget must be more than a ledger sheet. It should have a heart and serve as a blueprint for a better quality of life for all residents.”

John R. Leopold (1943) politician

Hometown Annapolis - County Executive Leopold's FY08 Budget Address http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2007/05_02-02/TOP

Life

“Animals shouldn't be used, tortured in any kind of way. … So what I would say to my fans is to … get more information about it because anyone that has a heart will have compassion towards them. And just change your thought process, and in changing that, we might change the whole world.”

Vida Guerra (1974) American model

"Model Vida Guerra's Naked Photo Shoot", video interview with PETA (21 March 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyATIrWIT0c

World , Way , Change , Animals

“We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, traces the victorious footsteps of our party in the past, and, carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Life , Mountain , Memory , Past

“If your wife gives you her heart, you must take it, thankfully, and use it well, and not pull it in pieces, and laugh in her face, because she cannot snatch it away.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIV : First Quarrel; Helen to Arthur

“A Government with Heart for the differently-abled, the elderly, and the youth, including even children yet unborn.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

Children , Youth

“When calculations become complex and Infinity is obscured, then will be remembered anew the simplest principle: from heart to heart — such is the law of fraternity, community, fellowship.
Toiler, when the energy is transmuted into an ocean of light,
does thy consciousness quiver or expand?
Toiler, is thy heart fearful or exultant
when before thee looms Infinity?”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 275
New Era Community (1926)

Fear , Law , Communication , Light

“How much we give to other hearts our tone,
And judge of others' feelings by our own!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title poem, section IV.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Feeling

“It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Here"
Tares (1961)

Hurt

“According to my first birth I am nothing but unclean slime and dust of earth, conceived and born in sin from my mother's womb, and educated all my life in all manner of ignorance, sin and blindness, until the clear light of grace and knowledge appeared unto me from high heaven and which has given me such a heart, will and desire, that I willingly seek after that which is good, and strive, with holy Paul to "follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus," Phil. 3: 12.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.248

Life , Education , Birth , Knowledge

“Some of you would prefer a Tory Government. We know our enemies. I have come across a coalition of Conservatives and Communists before. Tories have a very warm place in their hearts for Communists and so have the Communists for the Tories.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

The Times, 4 November 1930, quoted in Bernard Donoughue and George Jones, "Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician" (Phoenix Press, 2001), p. 236.

“I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Doctor, Doctor, Cut My Throat" (August 1972), in The Tragedy of the Moon (1973), p. 153
General sources

Animals

“Baby, you've got a heart so big,
It could crush this town.
But I can't hold out forever.
Even walls fall down.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Walls (Circus)
Lyrics, Songs and Music from "She's the One" (1996)

Baby

“Roy, this is my wife, Georgina Spica -- she has a heart of gold and a body to match… and I am Albert Spica and I have a heart of gold and a great deal of money to match.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Albert
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Money

“My old landscapes of Pennsylvania are worth so much now that I have to hide them, so I don't get put in an even higher tax bracket. For years nobody would pay a dime for them. They're still the same paintings. They didn't get any better. I treasure them as much as my recent black and white abstracts... My dealer was furious when I showed him my latest works. I'm returning to color. He tells me to ride it out and change when the fashion change. I told him no! I told him I paint each painting from the heart. I have followed my heart all my life.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1959
Quote from a speech of Kline in the jazz club The Five Spot, as quoted in Introduction by David Anram, The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, David Anram, David Acton, p. 21
1960's

Life , Color , Fashion , Change

“Another day goes by
Still the children cry
Put a little love in your heart.”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

"Put A Little Love In Your Heart" (1968); written with Jimmy Holiday and Randy Myers

Love , Children , Cry

“Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew—
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author

Poems (1773), "To a Lady, with some painted Flowers", p. 96.

Love , Art , Spring , Flowers

“Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world,.. not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, not those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal…. It is with a confident trust in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among the standard-bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother.84”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August, 1920
India's Rebirth

Life , Truth , World , Confidence

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Fear , Way , Idea , Business

“Someone sits in a mountain vale
A robe of clouds, rainbows for tassels
The fragrant forest is the place to live
The road has been long and difficult
With a heart full of doubt and regret
A life has passed and nothing has been accomplished
Others call it failure
I stand alone devoted to this Cold Mountain life”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Life , Mountain , Failure

“No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the saying might be true for the “last humans” in this long civilizational development:narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Pleasure , Imagination , Idea , Sense

“Go to the center of your inner being. Radiate peace in every direction. A compassionate heart radiates rays of beauty that removes the clouds of million hearts.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Source: Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Peace , Beauty

“Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. … Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#48
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Thinking , Sense

“By some strange and sinister fatality the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites—the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. I: The Moral Aspects of Vivisection, p. 15

Love , Faith , Dogs , Confidence

“Our Lord Jesus sheweth in love His blissful heart even cloven in two, rejoicing.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 1

Love

“Among what he called his precepts were such as these: Do not stir the fire with a sword. Do not sit down on a bushel. Do not devour thy heart.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pythagoras, 17.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 8: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

“Play with passion and heart. If you don't carry passion into sport -- or in any job for that matter -- you won't succeed.”

Phil Esposito (1942) Canadian ice hockey player

Quoted in Andrew Podnieks, "One on One with Phil Esposito," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep198401.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2002-02-18).

Sport , Passion

“Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth, a primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Hope , History , Sense , Laughter

“Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, "You cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven’t time to be concerned for others." Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when the heart grows faint, we can take comfort from His promise: "Be not weary in well-doing. … Out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind."”

Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Finding Peace, Ensign, Mar. 2004, 3.

World , Soul , Effort , Light

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Money , Books , Beauty , Music

“Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either. He stands today between the two extremes of black and white, too proud to claim fraternity with either, and yet too weak to withstand the power of either. Heretofore, the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom. Until recently, neither the Indian nor the negro has been treated as a part of the body politic. No attempt has been made to inspire either with a sentiment of patriotism, but the hearts of both races have been diligently sown with the dangerous seeds of discontent and hatred.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom , Parting

“I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude — a feeling which increases with the years.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant translation: I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude...
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)

Family , Feeling , Home , Sense

“India is always in my heart and I put that in my paintings and sometimes in my dairies and letters.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

Painting

“Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

Youth , Wealth

“Still falls the Rain —
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds, — those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark…”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

Sadness , Light

“The large 'White Flower' [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

both quotes in a letter to William M. Milliken, New York November 1, 1930; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 227
1930s

Color , Flowers , Painting

“As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 23
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

“There is only the constant knowledge and enjoyment of the Heart, moment to moment, through the instant of all conditions of appearance and disappearance. Of this I am perfectly certain. I am That.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Page 23, 2004 Standard Edition.
The Knee of Listening

Knowledge , Appearance

“At that stage my heart ruled my head.”

Kamisese Mara (1920–2004) President of Fiji

concerning the 1987 coups and their aftermath The Fiji Sun http://www.sun.com.fj/

“The three wise men from the east recognised this planetary importance in the birth of Jesus Christ. Perhaps these wise men saw Dattatreya in baby Jesus. That is how the date December 25 was finalised. It is said in Datta Purana (mythology) that Dattatreya appears as child, Unmatta etc.
In those days the three wise men from the east recognised the power of Jesus. This day the wise men from the west are experiencing Jesus in Datta Peetham. For the men of reality the concept of east and west are just lines in the air.
Understanding the above may not be possible in just one reading. Read it several times and you will understand the underlying and profound concept. Swamiji has seen in a Church in Basel, Switzerland Jesus with three heads like Dattatreya. This potentiates the above statements.
Let us understand the above and from now onwards let us correlate Datta Jayanti and Christmas in our hearts and experience the unified divine power.”

Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji (1942) Indian guru

Christmas · Datta Jayanti (1996)

Men , Birth , Understanding , Reality

“If America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World. In the days when I studied abroad conditions were entirely different. The facilities for study in this country were meagre. There were even no life classes in our art schools and schools of painting. Naturally one had to seek instruction elsewhere, abroad. Today we need not do that.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Interview, Philadelphia Press; quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (1933).

Life , World , School , Art

“Concepts of uncertainty and information processing are used to integrate the diverse organization design/structure literatures. This approach more fully explicates the concept of congruence which lies at the heart of contingency ideas. The review suggests a contingency approach to design which develops a feasible set of structural alternatives from which the organization can choose.”

David A. Nadler (1948–2015) American organizational theorist

Source: "Information Processing as an Integrating Concept in Organizational Design." 1978, p. 613: Abstract

Literature , Idea

“Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were.”

Harpo Marx (1888–1964) American comedian

book, Harpo Speaks

Life , Boy

“Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

National Airs, Oft in the Stilly Night http://www.james-joyce-music.com/song04_lyrics.html, st. 1 (1815).

Love , Smile , Tear , Light

“He has a deep contempt for Britain, the British people and parliamentary democracy. He is trying to climb back to power via the Treaty of Rome, and put Britain under government from Brussels for ever. In 1970 Mr Heath solemnly promised that he would not take Britain into the Common Market without the full-hearted consent of the British people. He broke his pledged word then, and he now says he will not accept a 'No' vote on Thursday. Heath promised more jobs and higher living standards inside the EEC. These promises were all broken, and he now tells us we are so poor we cannot come out; beggars can't be choosers. That is false, too. Heath's leadership has been a total disaster for the British people. The Tory Party threw him out.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech at an anti-EEC rally (3 June 1975), quoted in 'Heath attack by Mr Benn', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 6
1970s

People , Democracy , Falseness

“And this is woman's fate:
All her affections are called into life
By winning flatteries, and then thrown back
Upon themselves to perish; and her heart,
Her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness,
Is left to bleed or break!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Castilian Nuptuals from The London Literary Gazette (28th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. 3rd series - Sketch the Fourth
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life , Fate

“It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be…infuriating.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue, “Shag Margold’s Eulogy of Nifft the Lean, His Dear Friend” (p. 5; ellipsis in the original)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Knowledge

“A trembling and some laughter, / a squirt of pee, a spit, / whispers of the heart, / a smell, / the drift to sleep, / pursuit by Gods, / exposure of the bum, / mathematics …”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

"The Schultz Song"
M is for Man, Music, and Mozart

God , Mathematics , Laughter , Sleep

“What's in my veins makes me free
Oh what you have done for me!
Two who made a work of art
Mama brought the armor, Daddy engineered the heart.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Baby One (new original song by Ysabella Brave)" (26 August 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJ7eaDWsAk

Art

“Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.”

James A. Michener book Centennial

Centennial (1974) First lines

Books , Appearance

“I didn't become a French painter or a European one. I remained an Indian painter through the years. That was always in my heart and I am very glad that I was able to come back here again.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

“The heart in which love and compassion for all living beings resides, can have no room for seeking after personal pleasures. O friend, take care to do no harm to any living creature; to hurt his creation is to forget the Creator.”

Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (1006–1089) Persian writer

Quoted in Tales of the Mystic East: An Anthology of Mystic and Moral Tales Taken from the Teachings of the Saints (Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1997), p. 208

Love , Pleasure , Hurt , Personality

“My father was a cool-tempered and unaffected man. Everyone who came in contact with him knew his straightforward way of acting, his scrupulous honesty; but few, very few, of his friends knew his noble and manly heart. Indifferent to praise and fame, as well as calumny, he was ever anxious to do good in silence; and it can be said of him, without fear of contradiction, that during his whole life he could never reproach himself with having been guilty of a bad or mean action.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life , Fear , Way , Silence

“Did you know that you could be wrong
And swear you’re right?
Some people been known to do it
All their lives.
But you find yourself alone
Just like you found yourself before.
Like I found myself in pieces
On the hotel floor.
Hard times help me see.I’m a good man with a good heart;
Had a tough time, got a rough start.
But I finally learned to let it go,
Now I’m right here, and I’m right now.
And I’m hoping, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over.
My shadow days are over now.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Shadow Days
Song lyrics, Born and Raised (2012)

People , Hope , Learning , Time

“There is a systemic problem with today's law enforcement.Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

War , Law , Problem , Thinking

“You don't want to hurt me,
But see how deep the bullet lies.
Unaware I'm tearing you asunder.
Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985)

Tear , Hurt

“That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 228.

Faith , Support , Christ

“Words are powerless to tell. —
Such the image in my heart, —
Painter, try thy glorious art!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme III: Outline for a Portrait
23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV: Arion see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Art

“Jack: When they laugh at one of my jokes… it just gets me right here. [Puts hand on heart]”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

“Ah! How many Judases have we in these days, that kiss Christ, and yet betray Christ; that in their words profess him, but in their works deny him; that bow their knee to him, and yet in their hearts despise him; that call him Jesus, and yet will not obey him for their Lord”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

from: A Word To The Reader
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Kiss , Christ

“In 1964, days before the presidential election which, incidentally, we lost, Ronald Reagan went on national television and challenged America saying that it was a "Time for Choosing." He saw two paths for America, one that embraced conservative principles dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all, and the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path. I'm no Ronald Reagan and this is a different moment but I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

People , Soul , Time , Help

“Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 11 (1802).

God , Lying , Housing

“Nature lies disheveled, pale,
With her feverish lips apart,—
Day by day the pulses fail,
Nearer to her bounding heart;
Yet that slackened grasp doth hold
Store of pure and genuine gold;
Quick thou comest, strong and free,
Type of all the wealth to be,—
Goldenrod!”

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) American novelist, poet

Goldenrod; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 326.

Nature , Strong , Wealth

“music's power
Is little felt in sunlit hour;
But hear its voice when hopes depart,
Like swallows, flying from the heart
On which the summer's late decline
Has set a sadness and a sign;......
How deeply will the spirit feel
The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal;
And how the heart drink in their sighs
As echoes they from Paradise.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Sadness , Hope , Music , Feeling

“Freedom is not a natural disposition, but God's precious gift to man. Those in whom viciousness becomes second-nature, those in whom brutality is linked with haughtiness, forfeit their ability and therefore their right to receive that gift. Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Volume 1, p. 191
The Prophets (1962)

God , Nature , Freedom

“I see them, crowd on crowd they walk the earth,
Dry leafless trees no autumn wind laid bare;
And in their nakedness find cause for mirth,
And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare;
No sap doth through their clattering branches flow,
Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear;
Their hearts the living God have ceased to know,
Who gives the springtime to th' expectant year.”

Jones Very (1813–1880) American poet and essayist

From The Dead

God , Spring , Autumn , Tree

“In every pang that rends the heart
The Man of Sorrows had a part”

Michael Bruce (1746–1767) Scottish poet and hymnist

"Where high the heavenly temple stands".

Parting

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Money , God , Pleasure

“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

World , Beauty , Parting

“Dear Saviour! we are Thine,
By everlasting bands;
Our hearts, our souls, we would resign
Entirely to Thy hands.”

Philip Doddridge (1702–1751) English Nonconformist leader, educator, and hymnwriter

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 397.

Soul

“A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture III: War, section 114 (1866).

Fools

“My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the hooves of time.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

Source: Discordants (1916), II

Singing , Time , Horse , Night

“You're the pain in my —
The hurricane in my —
Supersensitive heart, dear.
Still I love you, I know,
And the reason is merely because
You irritate me so!”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"You Irritate Me So"
Let's Face It (1941)

Love , Pain

“An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the 'Vengeance of the Little Yellow God.”

J. Milton Hayes The Green Eye of the Yellow God

The Green Eye of the Yellow God

God , Madness

“The great powers have dominated the destiny of the Islamic countries for years and… installed the Zionist cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world… Many of the problems facing the Muslim world are due to the existence of the Zionist regime.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

August 19, 2012 speech marking Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan http://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-israeli-a-malignant-zionist-tumor/
2012

World , Problem , Country

“And if you come and see me,
you will upset the order.
You cannot come and see me,
for I set myself apart.
But when you come and see me,
in California,
you cross the border of my heart.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

In California
Have One On Me (2010)

“Prayer simply means a longing of the heart, it is the wish felt, - it may be expressed, or not expressed. It may take the form of human language or it may never be uttered at all; still it is a prayer, if God only hears it in the secret recess of the heart.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Sermon at Hackney Unitarian Church, London, on 24th April 1870.

God , Secret

“I caught sight of my reflection;
I caught it in the window.
I saw the darkness in my heart;
I saw the signs of my undoing.
They had been there from the start,
And the darkness still has work to do.
The knotted chord's untying.
They're heated and they're holy.
Oh they're sitting there on high.
So secure with everything they're buying.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Blood of Eden
Song lyrics, Us (1992)

“Yes, we had one and all left our native planets in order to discover whether, regarding the cosmos as a whole, the spirit which we all in our hearts obscurely knew and haltingly prized, the spirit which on Earth we sometimes call humane, was Lord of the Universe, or outlaw; almighty, or crucified. And now it was becoming clear to us that if the cosmos had any lord at all, he was not that spirit but some other, whose purpose in creating the endless fountain of worlds was not fatherly toward the beings that he had made, but alien, inhuman, dark.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter VI: Intimations of the Star Maker (p. 71)

World , Universe

“In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, 'Then why not me?' In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a time to a higher standard of humanity.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

World , Question , Freedom , Suffering

“Zenit was always in my heart. That's where I won my first European title. When I left Saint Petersburg in 2009, the fans followed me to the airport, and I promised, I will return to Russia.”

Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (1979) Ukrainian footballer

http://www.sports.ru/football/150688480.html (2013)

“What do you do do when your heart says one thing and your head, and your lawyer, says another? I was a romantic. I put my whole heart on the line when I love someone. … I don't think like a thief so I never see this quality in others until it's too late.”

Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016) American actress, singer, and dancer

Source: Unsinkable : A Memoir (2013), Chapter 16. Bottoming Out in Beverley Hills

Love , Thinking

“Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part IX: The Light of the Harem

Love , World , Light , Sea

“My noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth rather suggested that it was a really good Socialist policy to join up with these countries. I do not think that comes into it very much. They are not Socialist countries, and the object, so far as I can see, is to set up an organisation with a tariff against the rest of the world within which there shall be the freest possible competition between, capitalist interests. That might be a kind of common ideal. I daresay that is why it is supported by the Liberal Party. It is not a very good picture for the future…I believe in a planned economy. So far as I can see, we are to a large extent losing our power to plan as we want and submitting not to a Council of Ministers but a collection of international civil servants, able and honest, no doubt, but not necessarily having the best future of this country at heart…I think we are parting, to some extent at all events, with our powers to plan our own country in the way we desire. I quite agree that that plan should fit in, as far as it can, with a world plan. That is a very different thing from submitting our plans to be planned by a body of international civil servants, no doubt excellent men. I may be merely insular, but I have no prejudice in a Britain planned for the British by the British. Therefore, as at present advised, I am quite unconvinced either that it is necessary or that it is even desirable that we should go into the Common Market.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/aug/02/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (2 August 1962).
Later life

Men , World , Way , Support